Budget

Since we all know setting a budget is important I created a category just for this. You’ll find my top tips on how to stretch your finances to travel longer. I like to showcase how you don’t need a huge budget to travel long term. I talk about my favorite ways to book accommodation, airfare, credit cards, and useful tools to help you keep track of your finances.

The Charles Schwab debit card is indisputably the best debit card for traveling.

In fact, it very well may be the best debit card ever. This debit card will not only make traveling better. It will change your day to day life. Have you ever needed cash but the ATM was going to charge a $5 fee? And on top of that your bank is going to charge a $5 fee? To pin the nail in the coffin your bill is only $10. Get the Charles Schwab debit card and fear no more, my friends. Lets take a look at the chart below:

The above chart shows how Schwab compares to the major banks in the States. Or, in other words, how the major banks in the States don’t compare to Schwab. These stats do change a bit if you have X amount of money with one of these other banks but the huge differences from a traveler’s stand point are the ATM fee rebates and no foreign transaction fees. I can also say from personal experience that Schwab wins hands down win it comes to customer service. I’ve had them overnight ship my debit card internationally free of charge on more than one occasion. But there’s even more if you’re keen on investing:

ETF’s are what I normally suggest people start with when they’re looking to get into investing. The reason being that they offer some prominent advantages in trading flexibility, portfolio diversification, risk management, lower costs, and tax benefits. Once you open an account with Schwab it only takes a few clicks to transfer some money over from your checking account into your brokerage account. No commission ETF’s are just another huge perk on top of everything else. Their trading platform, Streetsmart Edge, is also just as good as any other major trading platform in my opinion.

Through and through, I highly recommend Charles Schwab for both travelers and people looking to get started in investing. You can click here to open an account or read more into it on the Schwab website.